communication – though it never was whole – has broken down (has been perceived to have broken down or at least has moved into language in this way of having broken) as the commons has not broken down (by definition it cannot break down) but moved to its rightful place : that of mysticism
communication never was whole and cannot be. it lurches in ejaculations and dribbles, pools on the toes of the postcoitaled too distracted by their mutual affirmations and despairs to notice. communication is the mediocrity of the tyrannical, now everything in the fridge put into the pot (this the cleverness of capitalism) and forcefed into our maws which have become so desperate for anything to be stuffed into them we’re grateful for the gross and tepid stuffings and call them good
we perceive communication to have broken down due to a misnaming and misplacing, a misnaming due to a misplacing : for a small portion of the commons claimed the commons, not only one species among an almost countless myriad, but
the true commons is the horror our conglomerations of institutions and processes are designed to hide, for we are a fearful and cowardly species, aware enough of our comprehensive insignificance to turn immediately from the significance of this awareness
the true commons is mysticism – the voices of all : not all humans, but all things. and what is the communication of this commons? is it human language (even if we define language broadly to include gesture and the human unsaid replete in the spoken)? but human language, even in its broadest senses, weighs nothing next to the languages of the universe, which we do not speak let alone hear. and if the human were to exercise what might be its grandest capacity and learn, however possible, to crawl into the womb of listening … what then?
for what is corona other than yet another voice in the myriad vastnesses that speaks from the commons its language that we bury with our fearful deluge and slobber?
the artists and intellectuals among the first to go in any monist regime. and humanity in its incapacity to process plurality (hence the great present ejaculation of diversity, to launder the species’ shuffling of the deck and calling the shuffling a new game), despite occasional, small, and often difficult-to-find bubbles of safety, falls into monism as easily as it falls asleep – routinely, gratefully, with a profound sense of having deserved this grand supremacy and respite. whether the methods of eradicating the aliens, monsters, margins – those responsible for nurturing consciousness – will remain the same as the regimes of the past (prompt removal and extermination) is uncertain. although already we see signs that the effective processes will be accomplished more technocratically, indirectly, nicely, under the rubrics of democracy and goodness and science, and sometimes, even frequently, with smiles and praise before the enterprise is, yet again, forgotten
[we don’t mention the poor (although some artists and intellectuals are also among them) as the poor aren’t the first to go but are always going]
